Quote

Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and...it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path.... He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Must
Proper
Develops
Feels
Keeps
Needles
Every
Direction
Rightly
Always
Path
Bias
Never
Happy
Legitimate
Attains
Men
Individual
Obey
Obeys
World
Strong
Finds
Needle
Power
Points
Magnetic

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every sweet has its sour every evil its good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at whatis inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is a crack in everything God has made
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Knowledge is when you learn something new every day. Wisdom is when you let something go every day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson